Concerns mount over Escalante campground expansion

One of Utah’s most revered recreation sites is getting an overhaul, but not everyone is happy with what the Bureau of Land Management has in mind for the Calf Creek campground and trailhead.

Opinions are divided in Garfield County, where some want to see more visitor accommodations in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, while others oppose adding more pavement to historic sites like Calf Creek.

Parking and campsites will be expanded under a plan the BLM approved last week. Calf Creek is 15 miles east of Escalante on State Road 12, considered Utah’s most scenic byway. Tucked in a narrow canyon between sandstone walls, the site provides the sprawling monument’s only campground and access to the 3-mile trail to Lower Calf Creek Falls.

The plan, detailed in an environmental assessment released Feb. 2, is to reconfigure the site to double the amount of parking to about 70 stalls, add several more sites to the small campground and update its aging facilities.

“The need for this proposal is driven by the fact that the infrastructure is decades old and in need of repair, replacement or upgrade,” said BLM architect Allysia Angus at a recent meeting held virtually. The site’s footprint will be expanded from 8 to 9 acres.

The trail to the falls will be realigned out of the campground, bypassing it on the west side. Work could begin as early as this year and once complete in 2024, the Utah Department of Transportation will prohibit parking on the highway for a half mile on either side of the Calf Creek entrance. Federal funding is coming from the Great America Outdoors Act.

“We really are in a position to capitalize on some funding streams that come not on a regular annual basis,” Angus said, “so we don’t want to lose those opportunities.”

Also driving the need is growing visitation to the southern Utah monument, forcing the BLM to consider how to better accommodate the public. On particularly busy days, parked cars line the highway after Calf Creek’s 30 spots fill. Critics contend the agency’s approach is myopic and is liable to harm the natural resources the monument was set aside to protect.

“We can’t just keep widening and widening,” said Sarah Bauman, executive director of Grand Staircase Escalante Partners. “We support visitation because it’s a monument, but in a way that protects its wild nature as a place people can go and enjoy a wilderness experience. It’s a delicate balance that we haven’t quite figured out how to do on public lands.”

Bauman and others fear expanding the parking lot could lead to more overcrowding and will degrade the historic character of the quiet site, with its picnic area nestled in a grove of oak trees on the creek.

Responding to concerns about the fate of the oak grove, Angus said only about 15% of the trees would be cut down to make way for the revamped day-use and camping areas.

“The whole grove of trees will not disappear,” she said. “I definitely care that we only remove vegetation that’s necessary for long-term functionality at site.”

According to the monument’s retired manager, Carolyn Shelton, the site’s overhaul was put in motion years ago and is needed to better accommodate visitors in “front country” locations near the monument’s few paved roads.

“It has nothing to do with politics. It’s all about getting the funding. We had infrastructure failing and very unsafe conditions back then with people parking along the highway,” she said. “These were things that were evaluated 12 years ago. They are things that need to happen. We need to make these [front country] places accessible to a more diverse populations and made available to people coming from Chicago. That’s just the reality of more human beings.”

The 13-site campground and day-use area was developed in the 1960s and the larger 5,835-acre Calf Creek Recreation Area was designated in 1970 to encompass most of the creek’s watershed, a quarter century before the national monument was designated by President Bill Clinton.

“When I moved there in 1990, the one thing that impressed me about it was how well it was laid out to fit in the landscape. And to alter that and squeeze more campsites in there and take out vegetation when there isn’t room for it,” said Craig “Sage” Sorenson, a retired BLM recreation planner who lives in Escalante. “There is also the parking issue. It was built and designed to fit the use capacity of the trail. If we add more to that, we’re impacting the trail and the monument values of the Lower Falls.”

Sorenson has circulated a petition calling on the BLM to reconsider its plans and include the site on the National Register of Historic Places. More than 1,000 have signed the petition online and on paper.

“This area gem was thoughtfully and masterfully designed in the 1960s with the landscape and the people in mind,” the petition states. “It is a special place that has provided generations with memories, solace, and beauty.”

In other words, the site doesn’t need an overhaul, just a touch-up that preserves its original character.

“Why not build campgrounds elsewhere in the monument?” asked naturalist Jim Catlin, the retired director of the Wild Utah Project, since renamed Sageland Collaborative. “If you widen it, then they will come and you will have to widen again. The only long-term solution is a reservation system.”

The campground is available on a first-come, first-served basis and hikers pay a $5 fee per vehicle. The BLM declined to consider a permit or reservation system, but Sorenson and Weinick say that is exactly what is needed. The current 30-car parking lot restricts the number of people on the 3-mile trail and day-use area to about 100 at any one time.

“They want to accommodate 200 to 300 people on that trail. That doesn’t make any sense,” Weinick said. “Until you get the cars off the road, you are going to have to go to a permit system. They want people to come because they want their money, but there is no way more parking spots is the answer. Why don’t they take that money [earmarked for the parking lot] and create a permit system.”

Among other proposals the BLM considered but declined to analyze were construction of a helipad and a dance floor, and converting the campground and day-use area to parking.

“The areas between the cliffs and the creek on both sides of the campground are quite constrained and heavily vegetated. Converting the campground or portions of it to parking would require us to remove wide swaths of vegetation adjacent to the creek,” Angus said. “It’s already somewhat challenging to move through the campground which has a dead end on [the] east side and converting that to parking would likely exacerbate the traffic flow issues.”

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